


Guns and Glory

by Sailing_the_Skies



Category: Destiny (Video Games), Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Altpower, Amnesia, Gen, Guardian (Destiny) - Freeform, New wave - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27075298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sailing_the_Skies/pseuds/Sailing_the_Skies
Summary: As a child, Victoria wished more than anything to have the power to save her dying city. Now, she has been chosen as a Lightbearer, accompanied by a Ghost from another world. But powers don’t solve everything. Caught between her Ghost and her family, she will have to find her own path as a hero of Brockton Bay.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Elandera for consultation on guns and policing work, Amanuensis for springboarding my ideas, and aRover for doublechecking Destiny setting and gameplay stuff.

To look reality in the eye and spit defiance. That’s the dream, isn’t it? It takes a special person to do that. It takes a strong will, to look at the world, and reject what it offers, replacing it with your own vision. Those with power can make the world fall to its knees, o reader mine.

Imagine a girl who wants to be a hero, with every fiber of her being. To be seen by her parents. Such [longing] in her [heart]! In another world, she would have gotten her chance at 14 years old, at a basketball game that she thought was her only way to prove herself. But that didn't happen here. Cancelled by a snowstorm. The waste of a [shard] hanging out with her never got a chance to connect.

Years later, she gets another chance. She sees a group of men corner a terrified child in an alleyway. She fumbles with her phone to call 911, only to realize that it’s not there -- she left it at home. She clenches her fists, torn. She knows the reality of the situation, that an untrained teenage girl is no match for a multiple grown men twice her height.

If only she were a hero. But she is powerless.

She is filled with fear and hates herself for it. [Wishes] she has the power to help.

Imagine a mechanical [fragment of Light] with no such desire for heroics. She was made to find a hero, not become one. Doom lurks on the horizon of her world, in the form of a dozen triangular silhouettes. She thinks she could escape by leaving the solar system. But somewhere along the way she makes a wrong turn, and ends up on the outlaw side of the asteroid belt, where heroes go to die. Aliens dog her every movement, ready to take her apart and sell her body as scrap. They have her scent now, and they won't leave without their bounty.

The [fragment] hears the distinctive charge of a fusion rifle. In a few seconds, it will fire, and the bolts will hit her, and then she will die.

If only she had a way out. But she is trapped.

She ducks to the side, hoping that she can make her pursuer miss. [Wishes] she could escape it all. 

In reality, neither of them have a chance. But you didn’t come to this site for reality, did you? You came here to find a fiction spun from other fictions, to find meaning in the senseless roar of the world. I can give that to you.

I’m an Ahamkara, you see. I grant [wishes]. I speak in brackets sometimes, but I'm not one of those Lovecraftian horrors cooked up by Wibblebobbles, no. Really, the brackets can be considered a translation error. Some words mean far more to me than they do to you. 

Make the [bargain], o reader mine.

Move your finger -- it doesn’t have to be a lot, just a little. There, you’ve made a cut in space-time. The girl and the [fragment] were hundreds of years and worlds apart, but now you’ve connected them. Here, I’ll pull the [fragment] through. Give her a little time to recover from her near-death adventure, and then send her to claim the girl.

I always make good on my [bargains], o reader mine. Just you see.


	2. Spark 1.1

I bolted upright, hyperventilating. Where was I? Dirty, run-down buildings surrounded me, trapping me in a small alley. Many of them had crudely boarded-up windows. A door was tagged with a red and green spray-painted symbols, which I didn’t recognize. A bulky helmet covered my face.

I pushed the helmet off, and it crashed to the ground, into a puddle of blood. I stood up shakily.

“Fuck!” I said. “Fuckity fucking fuck!”

“Oh, thank the T-Traveler it worked,” a synthesized female voice said. “It’s okay, you’re okay, you're safe.”

A small drone about the size of a softball floated into view. It was made of a shell of eight metallic parts that looked like petals moving organically around a central sphere. The front of the sphere held a digital image of a bright blue eye, which blinked amicably.

How had this happened? I couldn't remember anything that would lead to me being alone in an alleyway in a pool of blood. In fact, I couldn't remember anything at all. My chest tightened.

“What the fuck happened to me?” I said. I wanted it to come out calm and measured, but my voice broke on the last words.

“You, you saved a little girl's life,” the drone said, a trace of awe in its voice. “A group of people tried to kidnap her. Your intervention helped her get away, but you were sh-shot in the process.” Its voice stumbled over the words, like lag in a video.

I looked at my hands, then the puddle of red around me. Despite what it looked like, my body felt whole. It was covered in a bizarre cross between a sleeveless cloth robe and military uniform. A black tinkertech undersuit lay beneath it. The whole thing was extremely ugly, but a good type of ugly, the type I could focus on. I latched onto the image like a lifeline, studying the outfit, using it to calm my mind down. _Breathe in. Breathe out. Take it one moment at a time._

After a few moments, my earlier panic eased. “I don’t feel like I’ve been shot.”

It paused, like it was taking a deep breath. When it spoke, it used a slower, gentler tone. “You died from your wounds, but I was able to resurrect you.”

 _You died._ For a moment, I stood there, frozen. Then, I pulled at the collar of armor at my neck, scrambling to find a pulse. It beat strong and fast, like nothing had ever happened to it. That was good, right? At least I had a heartbeat. I had to breathe, too, if what happened earlier was any indication. I blinked experimentally a few times, and that seemed to be working fine too.

I felt perfectly alive. I didn't remember dying at all. In fact, I couldn't remember saving a little girl’s life, being shot, or how I had gotten to this shady alley in the first place. My mind blanked on remembering _anything_ before I had woken up just now.

My head didn't hurt the way it should if I’d gotten a brain injury. That left the possibility that something had messed with my mind.

 _Master/Stranger protocols._ The words leapt into my mind, though I didn’t know from where. They were designed for situations like this, when powers interfered with the mind, senses, or body. It was possible that things had happened exactly as the drone said, but it was also possible that it was lying. I had no way to know, especially because my memories were missing. I didn't even know who I was! Until I had a better idea of what was happening, I had to follow them as much as possible.

_When you don't know what to do, assess the situation._

The alley was completely empty. It was just the drone and me.

“Thank you,” I said slowly. “Excuse me for asking, but what are you?”

“I am a Ghost,” it answered. “The Traveler created me to find a hero to gift my Light to so I... so I could choose a worthy partner. You’re a Lightbearer now.”

“That’s not how it works,” I said. “People don't get powers because a Ghost visits them. They only trigger with powers from events with extreme emotional highs or lows.”

Ghost’s petals whirred. “I, I come from a different place. In my world, the T-Traveler gave Humanity the Golden Age, and after the Collapse, it created Ghosts to find worthy Lightbearers. Th-things work differently there.”

I frowned. I still knew some general things about the world, enough to remember that Earth Bet was one of many divergent realities. We’d established contact with an alternate Earth named Earth Aleph, and there were conspiracy theories that Indonesia had found another one, so it was _possible_ that Ghost had come from an alt-Earth with different powers. That still didn’t mean it was _true_.

If Ghost was capable of directly controlling me or threatening me, it wouldn’t have to make up bad lies like this. It didn’t react well to being questioned, either. I could afford to press harder.

I decided to bluff. “I know what you did. Why did you take my memories?”

Ghost’s gaze dropped to the ground. “That -- that -- it always happens when we first raise a Lightbearer. They never get the memories of their first life back. We don't know why it happens.”

“So you admit it, you’ve brainwashed me.” I said, raising my voice as I stepped closer. I stared down at Ghost.

Ghost drew her petals in close. It looked similar to a human shrinking back from an argument, but I wasn't sure enough on drone body language to say for sure. “I d-don’t want to brainwash you! It’s just, just, I’m not explaining it well enough. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” She paused. “I s-saved a few things from your body before I raised you, I don't know if they'll help at all, but you can take a look, if you hold out your hand… ”

The air shimmered with a white circular effect, and a moment later, a wallet appeared in my hands.

I opened up the wallet. Inside, it had some cash, a credit card, and most importantly, a student ID.

Victoria Dallon. Junior. Arcadia High School. A teenage girl's face smiled at me from the card, with straight blond hair, gold headband, and a white blouse. The photo exuded confident charm. The credit card had the same name on it. I waited for the cards to spark some recognition in me, some feeling of rightness, but… nothing happened. For all I knew, the wallet could be completely fake.

A loud crash sounded from one end of the street. I looked up, and saw two Asian men walking my way. They were dressed in ratty t-shirts, with baseball caps turned backwards on their heads. One of them had a big gold chain around his neck, which made him look like he was trying too hard to be cool.

 _Reach out. Listen to people who aren’t compromised._ It was another part of Master/Stranger Protocols. Even though these two didn't look reliable, their minds would be free of any influences that Ghost had put on me. Maybe they'd let me borrow a phone.

“Heyyyyy gorgeous,” the one with the gold chains slurred loudly.

The other one, with large rips in his jeans, called out, “What's a lil’ white girl doing all by herself in the middle of ABB territory?”

On second thought, I didn't like the tones of their voices. I backed away slowly.

They continued to move closer. Gold chain guy cracked his knuckles and shouted, “Hey, we’re talking to you!”

Torn Jeans elbowed Gold Chain. “Dude, what if we bring her in? Glen said he fought some crazy blond bitch earlier, might be happy if we bring in a replacement.”

“Maybe he'll share!” Gold Chain said, laughing.

They brought out twin switchblades and ran after me.

What did M/S protocols say about something like this? Prioritize by the biggest immediate threat. Unlike Ghost, who possibly meant me harm, these men definitely wanted to hurt me.

“Ghost, what’re my powers?” I asked quietly.

“It's kind of c-complicated. I can heal you from anything, even death. You'll keep your memories, I promise! You have more powers, but, but, it really depends --”

I cut her off. “You can heal me anytime, are you sure?”

“As long as I can get close to your body, I can heal or rez you. Unless – well, th-this is really rare, and I don't think your world has anything like this, but s-something like Hive magic, other sources of paracausal interference, that can block it.”

“Any drawbacks to the resurrection?”

“Not at all, no,” Ghost said, its shell whirling quickly.

Running away from these men would be declaring defeat. It would tell them that they could get away with terrorizing women on the streets, that they could do whatever they wanted and nobody would stop them. I was a resurrection brute who could come back from death without consequence. If I didn’t set them straight, who would?

I settled into a fighting stance, with my hands up to guard my face one leg ahead of the other. The motion was practiced, familiar. I didn’t remember learning how to fight, but my muscles did. Combined with Ghost’s resurrection, that would have to be enough.

Gold Chain got within arm's length of me. “Come on babe, don't be shy.”

I slugged him in the face.

He slashed wildly with his knife. I stepped back to avoid it. Then, I wrapped my arms around his knife arm, so he didn’t have the range to attack me. His breath stank of alcohol. I ignored it. I yanked his arm downwards, at the same time bringing my knee up to his groin repeatedly.

He collapsed to the ground, groaning. I kicked his head, and he stopped groaning.

Searing pain ran down my back. I turned around and shoved off Torn Jeans, who had snuck up behind me to stab me.

Fucking fuck, my back hurted so much right now. When was Ghost going to heal it? I wasn’t sure I could keep fighting like this. What if Ghost had lied about being able to heal me?

“The more you fight, the more we’re gonna hurt you,” Torn Jeans taunted. “Surrender now, or you’re not gonna like what comes next.”

I spat at him. “Never.”

Torn Jeans jabbed again at me. I held him at bay with my arms, trying to slap his knife arm away from my body whenever it got close. Small cuts opened in my arms.

At that moment, Ghost flew into Torn Jean’s face with an audible _crunch_! He flinched backwards in surprise, giving me the chance to shove him into the ground and force the knife out of his grip. I leveled the knife at him, and he immediately went still.

I resettled into a wrestler’s hold on Torn Jeans. Then, I cut strips out of my weird sleeveless robe and used them to tie him and Gold Chain up. For good measure, I gagged them too. Ghost circled around me as I worked, bathing me in a soft blue light. My wounds closed up, as if I've never had them in the first place.

I rummaged through Gold Chain’s and Torn Jean’s pockets until I found a phone. I didn’t know the password, but like I’d hoped, it had a button for emergency calls.

“Thank you for healing me,” I said to Ghost. “Um. I feel kind of bad about this, but I still can't fully trust you yet. Have to follow M/S Protocols, you know? If you're willing to turn yourself in to the PRT, and cooperate with them, that’ll count for a lot. I’ll trust you if they say you’re good.”

“O-okay,” Ghost said.

I dialed 911.


	3. Spark 1.2

“911, what is your emergency?”

“I’m a cape, and I’ve arrested two men who tried to assault and kidnap me. I also need help with a potential Master/Stranger situation. I have amnesia for everything before the last 10 minutes, and there's a drone with me that claims that it’s from an alt-Earth and gave me my powers.”

“Do you need medical help?”

“Maybe. The drone healed me from my wounds, and she claims there’s no drawbacks for it, but I don’t know if it’s telling the truth.”

“Where are you?”

“Uh, let me check.” I looked for a street sign, then said, “Intersection of Rosewood and Brown.”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t remember a cape name, but the drone gave me a school ID card that says Victoria Dallon.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. 

“Your parents put a missing child alert for you a few hours ago,” the operator said. 

I had a family! I hadn’t expected that. Logically, I should have guessed it, but I hadn't realized that I had _parents_. Did I have siblings, too? What were they like?

“What does the drone look like? Is it aggressive?” the operator continued.

I shook myself out of my thoughts. “Ghost is pretty small, about half the size of my head. It’s a small orb with metal petal shape things around it. She helped me in the fight earlier.”

“Don't hang up. We’ll send someone your way.”

Minutes passed. I paced around the alleyway, watching Ghost watch me. She was surprisingly expressive, looking around with its bright blue eye and twitching it's petals in small motions. From what I remembered, Master capes usually got their powers from having social problems -- loneliness, betrayal, or loss. Ghost had a nervous personality, which might fit the bill, but she was so obviously not human. Did the normal rules for powers apply to sentient tinkertech? It would make more sense if its Master capabilities were built in.

She didn’t act like a nefarious Master. She had helped me in the fight earlier, and hadn’t stopped me from calling 911. She also hadn’t forced me to do anything. If anything, I had pushed her around more than she had pushed me.

Sirens began to wail in the background. 

Two police cars and a PRT van pulled up into the alleyway, 50 feet from me. Red and blue police lights flashed in the alleyway, mixing with the green and white of PRT lights. The window of the police car rolled down, and the sirens stopped. A speakerphone emerged from the window.

“Unknown cape,” said a masculine voice from the police car, “we got a call that a cape was potentially being mastered by a piece of tinkertech, and made two arrests. Is that you?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “They’re all with me.”

Three PRT troopers emerged from the van. They were all dressed in black, covered by bulky kevlar vest. Even though they were normal humans and not capes, their faces were blocked from view by dark faceplates. The only way to tell them apart was the blocky white numbers printed on their vests. One of them had a tank on their back with a large hose leading from it, a containment foam launcher.

“Parahuman Response Team! We are here to take the tinkertech Master into custody. Come with us, or we will use force!” The one with the containment foam shouted. Another held a small cage.

Ghost looked towards me, then back at them. I motioned forwards, and she flew to the cage. The troopers immediately foamed her down and took the cage into the van.

I winced. They were more aggressive than I’d expected. Hopefully they wouldn’t be too rough with Ghost.

A balding, chubby man emerged from the car. His uniform was crumpled and his shirt was untucked, though he held his notebook and pen with practiced ease. Compared to the troopers, he looked much more approachable. “We have a missing persons report filed for your civilian persona. In the interest of safety, I’m going to ask you some questions and then send you home, mkay? It’ll be really fast.”

I recounted everything that had happened since I woke up in the alleyway.

“Anything else you want to say?”

“Ghost is shy,” I said. “I didn’t get the feeling that she wanted to hurt me, but… you know better than I do.”

“That’s for the PRT to decide,” the policeman said blandly.

“What about the people I arrested?”

“We’ll bring them in, you don’t need to worry about it. I’m going to drive you home, alright? Your parents will be glad to see you.”

We got into the car. As we drove, I looked out at the city. We left the dirty alleyways and emerged onto a larger street with people walking on the sides and sturdier-looking buildings. The further we went, the cleaner and brighter the city got. Broken windows and graffiti were replaced by bright lights and large window displays.

We approached an area with taller buildings, glassy skyscrapers that towered above everything else. One of them was named Medhall, with white stone walls, columns, and archways. Another was called Stansfield Inc. These names felt familiar to me, but I couldn't pick out anything else about them. Beyond them was a hospital named Brockton Bay General.

Then we took a turn onto a highway. Shopping malls gave way to townhouses, which gave way to single family homes broken up by stretches of scraggly forest. We were heading to the suburbs now. 

The car slowed down inside a neighborhood lined with trees and full of two-story houses. Unlike the run-down apartments I’d seen, these houses were clean, with neat little yards in front. A few of them even had white picket fences.

My stomach tightened. What was my family like? They cared enough about me to put out a missing child alert, so they couldn't be that bad, right? Would they be angry that I didn't remember them? Would they be sad?

We stopped at a cream colored house with a tidy lawn.

“This is it,” the policeman said. “Your family.”

I rang the doorbell.

A tired-looking teenage girl opened the door. Messy brown hair framed her face, which was completely covered with freckles. Her T-shirt and jeans were generic brand looks, overall creating an inoffensive outfit, if not a bland one.

She grabbed my hand. “No injuries, good physical condition, fitter than before. Brain structure is fine, except for the hippocampus…” she muttered. She looked up at me. “Victoria, what _happened_ to you?”

I looked blankly at her. How did she know this stuff? Was she a cape? She wasn't wearing a costume, which was out of the ordinary.

The policeman stepped in. “Panacea, your sister has recently been through a traumatic experience that might have left her with amnesia. Can you heal it?”

Panacea screwed up her face. “I don't do brains. I can't fix this. And don’t call me Panacea when I’m not on duty, it’s just Amy now.”

That confirmed it, Amy had powers.

The policeman sighed. “It was worth a shot. Are Brandish and Flashbang -- are your parents home?”

“No, they were out with the search parties. They're coming back now.”

“I’ll drop off Victoria here, so your parents can decide what to do with her when she gets home,” the policeman said. He handed a packet of papers to Amy and then stepped away.

I went into the house. It had a minimalistic theme, with white walls everywhere and a clean hardwood floor. The area closest to me was filled with couches surrounding a TV. A little bit further, I saw a large dining table, big enough to fit a dozen people, empty except for a pile of papers and two laptops on one end of it. One wall held a framed photo with Amy and several other people dressed in colorful costumes, all smiling brightly for the camera. Amy’s costume was different from the rest, a heavy white robe with a red cross on it that swallowed her up. A red scarf wrapped around her neck. Comparatively, everyone else was wearing tight spandex. This had to be the rest of Amy's team.

Amy hugged me fiercely. “I’m so happy to see you. I thought you might be gone forever,” she said. “What happened?”

I might not remember her, but the hug had a cozy warmth to it. I returned it, then sat on the couch. 

“I don't know very much,” I murmured. “The first thing I remember is waking up somewhere, and then there's like this tinkertech drone in my face. Says a whole bunch of stuff about how I died, and then it brought me back, and now I'm a Lightbearer that's supposed to defend Humanity. Then two men tried to attack me, and the drone helped me fight them off. I don’t know what to think now.”

“It's good that you escaped,” Amy said. 

“That's the thing, I don’t know if it was really an escape,” I said. “I used Master/Stranger Protocols right away, because the whole thing was so suspicious, but… Ghost didn't seem like she really wanted to hurt me.”

Amy's lip quirked upward. “That drone messed with the wrong person! Only you’d use cape knowledge to escape a kidnapping, sis.”

She looked at me expectantly. The moment dragged on awkwardly for a moment before Amy continued on. “What, you're not going to tell me that this is why everybody needs to memorize the PRT handbook before leaving the house?” 

I didn't know how to respond. It felt like the script of an easy joke that had been repeated over and over, except that I'd forgotten my lines. I hadn't just lost all of my memories, I'd lost my interactions with everyone I'd known. Now that I thought about it, I didn't really know what my relationship with Amy had been like. It seemed like we had been close, but the details, the intricacies, the little jokes that had been built up over the years -- all the important things -- all of it was gone.

Would I ever get any of it back?

“Do you want to eat anything, Vicky?” Amy asked. “It's getting close to dinnertime, and I don't know how long it'll be before Carol and Mark get back. The police should have told them by now, but traffic is always bad this time of day.”

Now that I thought about it, I _was_ pretty hungry. “I can help,” I said.

I followed Amy to the kitchen, where it turned out that my help wasn't needed at all. Amy retrieved a pizza from the freezer, which was near to bursting with frozen meals of all different sorts, and put it into the microwave. While she was doing that, she opened a bag of peas and boiled them in a pot.

After 5 minutes, we took it to the large dinner table. The pizza crust was soggy, and the boiled peas were mushy, but it was edible enough, and more importantly, fast. I scarfed it all down.

Half an hour later, I heard the noise of something unlocking. My head jerked around. Where was the door again? Amy glanced my way, and then as if silently deciding something, got up from her seat. I followed her. 

A middle-aged couple came through the front door. The first was a blond woman with her hair in a neat bob, in a tight orange and white costume. It was elegantly streamlined, with orange lines running throughout that subtly accentuated her figure, but not enough to be trashy. The middle of her costume held a silhouette of two crossed blades inside an orange circle. The second was a helmeted man in a green and white outfit with large padded pauldrons that were layered like a grenade. He had a matching symbol on his chest as the woman, a stylized green bomb with a lit fuse. This costume looked a lot more defensive. 

They had to be my parents. How had Amy referred to them, by their first names? I should do the same.

Carol hugged me fiercely. “Oh, Victoria, I was so worried! I tried to call you, but you left your phone here! I'm so glad that you got home safely.”

I hugged her back.

“Are you okay?” Mark asked. “We got the rundown from the cops, but I want to know how you're doing with all of this.”

“I'm fine,” I said. “It wasn't actually that bad. Ghost -- uh, the drone never tried to hurt me, or to make me do anything. I beat the other guys pretty solidly, too.”

Carol’s nostrils flared. “I’ll find who the prosecutor for their case is. They'll spend a long time in jail.”

Mark laid a hand on my shoulder. “You're a strong girl, Victoria. You'll make it through this.”

“Have you eaten yet, Victoria? We can discuss this over dinner,” Carol said.

“Thanks, but I had some pizza with Amy,” I said.

“We can still talk,” Carol insisted.

I didn’t have anything better to do, so I followed them back into the dining room. Carol spent the next ten minutes quizzing me on everything that had happened, drawing out every single detail that she could. There were parts where I wanted to slow down to gather my thoughts, but Carol pressed onward.

“You can't be so sure that the drone is friendly,” Carol said. “These types of things will betray you when you least expect it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“No, I mean it. You can't trust it.”

“That's why I turned her -- it -- in to the PRT,” I said.

She squeezed my hand tightly. “Good.”

Then she went on asking me about the two men I'd arrested. Asking if they had hurt me, or touched me inappropriately. Somehow I ended up telling her about the knife wounds I’d gotten, even though they had all healed up, to reassure Carol that I was fine, really, nothing they did had stuck. 

“ABB scum,” she spat.

“What?” I asked.

“They have to be members of the Azn Bad Boys. Oh, Victoria, I wish I could have been there for you.”

 _Is that seriously the name of their group?_ It sounded ridiculous. But this didn't seem like the time or place to say that.

“It turned out fine,” I said.

“You should have had your phone with you,” Carol said, suddenly changing tack. “What were you thinking, leaving the house without it? You know what Brockton Bay is like. We could have found you much earlier if you’d had your phone, and then this wouldn’t have happened.”

I cringed. I couldn't say anything in defense of myself, because I didn't even remember why I had left the phone at home.

Mark laid his arm on Carol. “Didn't you say that you wanted dinner? Victoria’s been through a lot today. We should let her rest, don't you think?”

“Of course,” Carol said. “I was just so _worried_.”

“We can continue this later,” Mark said.

With that, they went into the kitchen.

I wandered upstairs. I found several doors, one marked with blue stickers with Amy’s name and with swords and dragons, another with gold stickers with my name, along with hearts and superheroes. Some of these stickers, especially the ones on the bottom, were faded and peeling with age. 

I pushed open the door to my room.

Posters filled the room. I wandered inside, looking at all of them one by one. The biggest one was at the head of the bed, a poster showing three people flying outwards: a hooded man in a green cloak with light glowing around his body, a muscular woman in a black spandex suit with a white tower emblazoned on her chest and her fist raised to the sky, and a handsome man in a blue and white outfit shooting beams from his eyes. All of their faces were hidden under masks. They had to be parahumans -- capes in common terms. Information rushed into my mind: this was the Triumvirate, the strongest group of heroes in the US. They used to work together, but now they each headed their own hero team in different cities, all under the banner of the Protectorate. I could list their powers, their first appearances, their most famous fights, and even their favorite songs. I must’ve been obsessed with them.

The next set of posters loomed by the side of the bed, a long horizontal lineup each featuring a different cape, but unified by the Brockton Bay Protectorate logo and the signatures scrawled across them. Compared to the Triumvirate, I didn't remember nearly as much about them. Why? Had I been less interested in the local heroes? That didn’t line up with having autographed posters of them.

A nearby bookshelf held an array of trophies and plaques. Most of them were from basketball, but there were a few debate team and science olympiad trophies too. It looked like I’d tried to do everything at school. I picked up a basketball trophy labeled “2009-2010 varsity, most dedicated.” I stared at it, willing myself to remember how I had gotten it, but my mind stayed blank. Without my memories, all of these trophies were just useless hunks of metal.

Amy had confirmed that my mind had been altered. Would I ever get my memories back? My throat closed up. Now that I was confronted with all the remnants of my old life, I could see the enormity of how much was gone. My entire family felt like strangers to me now. My home was unfamiliar. How much more had I lost?

If Ghost had Mastered me, then she had killed the old Victoria Dallon. If she had resurrected me… the old Victoria Dallon still might be dead.

My eyes fell on a closet. The sight of it reminded me of the ugly tinkertech armor that I still wore. With everything that had happened before, I'd forgotten about it. Now, I couldn't stand the feel of it against my skin.

I opened the doors. Rows and rows of hangers greeted me, filled with t-shirts, pants, and skirts. They welcomed me with their bright colors, yellows and blues and pinks and whites. I fingered the fabric of an off-the-shoulder shirt, with wide sleeves meant to accentuate the wearer’s upper body. This looked like a summer wardrobe. Taking it in, I felt closer to my past self. Whoever she’d been, whatever she’d been like, her fashion sense was awesome. Finally something that I understood.

The armor was folded up and shoved out of sight. Then, I picked out an oversized yellow t-shirt that slipped off my shoulders and a pair of navy blue leggings. It was loose, casual, chic, the exact opposite of the tight, military armor from before. I looked like a normal teenage girl.

I separated my hair into different strands to braid them. At first it was slow, but after the first few strands, my fingers started acting by themselves, working off of muscle memory that my brain had forgotten. I couldn’t see the pattern forming on the back of my head, but the feel of it, hair woven into an elaborate braid, was soothing. 

A wave of tiredness washed over me. Now that I was back home, or the building that I had used to call home, I just wanted to sleep.

There had to be a bathroom somewhere. I got out of my room and started checking the different doors of the hallway. The first door was Amy’s, and the second opened to a supply closet with linens and towels, but the third one opened to a bathroom.

My heart sank when I immediately hit a new problem. The sink held two cups, each with a toothbrush inside, and I couldn't tell which one was mine. I held them both up, inspecting them. Which cup would the old Victoria Dallon have used, a navy blue mug with a generic pattern on it, or a green Brockton Community College cup? I didn't want to guess wrong. Using someone else’s toothbrush, even by accident, would be disgusting.

I knocked on Amy’s door.

“In a moment,” she grumbled.

“Which toothbrush is mine in the bathroom?” I called.

“Brockton Community cup,” Amy said.

“Thanks.” 

I grabbed the yellow toothbrush in the Brockton Community cup to brush my teeth. Afterwards, I looked carefully at the other bottles of skin care products in the bathroom. I found a cleanser and a moisturizer, which I applied to my face, but stayed away from the prescription anti-acne cream and the makeup in the lower drawers.

I couldn’t find pajamas in my room. Too tired to keep looking, I face-planted into bed and fell asleep.


	4. Spark 1.3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter had a section added to it. If you don't remember Carol going into Mama Bear mode, then you should go back and reread Spark 1.2

I woke up in an unfamiliar bed. 

I bolted upright, frantically trying to figure out how I had gotten here, before I remembered. This was my old bedroom. I was supposed to be here.

Groaning, I swept the blankets off. Now that I was awake, I might as well start the day. 

I stepped in front of the closet to pick out a new outfit for today. Cardigans, t-shirts, blouses, rompers, jeggings, and more looked back out at me. The old Victoria must have spent a lot of time shopping to build up such a collection. Eventually, I decided to continue with the chic style from yesterday and picked out a white t-shirt with a knot on the bottom and a ruffled skirt.

I carried the clothing to the bathroom, where I took a shower and brushed my teeth. Once again, I put my hair up into braids, this time with a braid going down each side of my head. Even if I couldn’t affect anything else, I could control this. My body was mine, even if my mind wasn’t.

Finally, I went downstairs. 

Carol was in the kitchen, packing a tupperware meal into a purse. She was dressed in a sharp gray blazer and matching skirt, with a string of pearls around her neck. It radiated the same authority as her costume yesterday, but emphasized elegance instead of raw power.

“Good morning, Victoria,” she said.

“Good morning, Carol,” I replied.

She frowned. “You should know that the proper term is Mom.” 

I could have sworn that Amy had used first names when talking about our parents, but... maybe that was a one-time thing only. “Sorry,” I said. “I won’t do it again, Mom.”

She smiled. “In case you need a refresher, there's cereal in the pantry and Hot Pockets in the freezer for breakfast. Let me know if you have questions about anything else.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Where can I find a bowl?”

Mom opened a cabinet door. I took out a bowl and put in cereal and milk.

“Last night, I wanted to continue our discussion further, but by the time Mark and I finished the dishes, you were already asleep. I decided not to wake you up,” Mom said. “I want to be here for you, Victoria, and I can't do that if you hide yourself away. It worries me. I want you to tell me that you won’t continue to isolate yourself like that.”

She’d noticed me escaping the conversation. That was awkward.

“I won’t do it again,” I said.

“Good. Now, I made an appointment with the Protectorate at 4 PM today. It’s possible that the drone tampered with your mind in more than one way, so we have to check,” she said. “You’re still a minor, so they need parental permission to do a full screening. I’ll accompany you for that.”

I nodded along with her. “Got it.”

“I'm going to work now,” Carol said. “Mark and Amy will be at home with you. Call if you need me.”

She went out the door, and I sat at the table to eat breakfast.

Talking with Carol -- Mom -- was weird in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. Hopefully it would get better with familiarity. I had to remember that even if I didn’t remember any maternal connection with her, she still remembered me from before. Her clinginess probably only felt smothering because I viewed her as a stranger.

Maybe the Protectorate could help me recover my memories. Ghost had claimed that I would never get them back, but if Ghost _had_ Mastered me, there was no reason for her to tell the truth. Few Master effects were truly permanent. Many of them faded over time, like the villain Teacher, who could make others more intelligent but more subservient to him for a few days, or the Protectorate hero Edict, who could issue commands that would make people who disobeyed suffer random consequences for a few hours. Other Master effects could be broken through power interactions, such as if Scapegoat transferred the effect to himself.

Amy came downstairs, still looking half-asleep. Her clothes today were equally safe and bland as the ones yesterday, making me wonder if her personal style was to avoid having a style.

“Good morning,” I said to her.

“Morning,” she grunted back. She shambled over to the freezer and pulled out a Hot Pocket. She microwaved it, then sat down at the table with me.

Based on my impressions from yesterday, Amy seemed much safer than Mom.

“I was wondering,” I started. “I talked to Mom just now, and I used her first name because you do it, but she didn't seem to like it. What’s going on with that?”

Amy winced. “I don’t _actually_ say that when she’s around to hear. Did she yell at you?”

“No, she just sounded very disapproving.”

“That's Carol’s way of yelling at you,” Amy said, nodding. “It's never enough to let the neighbors hear, but it's always enough to make you feel bad. One time we were at the library, and she went on a rant about how only kids read the Maggie Holt books, right as I was trying to check them out. Everyone could hear it. It was years ago and I _still_ remember it. The Maggie Holt books are _not_ for kids.”

So it wasn’t just my lack of familiarity with Carol. Good to know. Despite what I had said to her, I was already planning on finding ways to avoid her. I’d just have to make it through our trip to the PRT together.

“Do you read much?” I asked, to move the conversation along. 

Amy shrugged. “Not anymore,” she said. “Hospital work takes up so much time, and then there's homework… Usually I watch things on TV.”

“What do you do at the hospital?”

“I heal,” Amy said. “Or… you already knew this before, but it's not really healing. I can manipulate living things, so I use that to fix people. I can see how their baseline selves are supposed to be and make them match that. Every few days I go to the hospital healing their worst cases.”

I thought back to the level of detail she had been able to sense about me yesterday. Her power was much more powerful than she made it sound, even just as an information gathering tool. If she could do anything else with it… 

“Can you change people in other ways?” I asked.

“I don't do that,” Amy said. “I have rules.”

“Could you, if you wanted?”

“I don't want to,” Amy said, with an air of finality.

 _Probably shouldn't push that._ I’d gotten so excited wondering about her power that I’d forgotten to consider the person holding it. “Sorry if I hit a nerve,” I said.

“It’s okay if it’s you,” she said. 

Amy finished with breakfast, quickly rinsing off her dishes, before going to the living room to sit down in front of the TV. I liked her company, so I followed and took a seat next to her on the couch.

Amy flipped through the channels, going from commercial to commercial, before settling on a channel showing The Walking Dead. I didn’t recognize any of the characters in the show or understand any of the drama, but the action scenes were gripping enough to hold my attention. We sat together in quiet camaraderie. 

The rest of the day passed like that, keeping Amy company and asking about family life. I learned that Mark -- Dad -- had depression from an injury years ago and spent a lot of time in bed, which was why I hadn’t seen him yet today, and that we had two cousins, Crystal and Eric, who were okay but had too much of an age gap to really relate to. Crystal was in her second year of college now and Eric was just graduating middle school, and middle school boys were _stupid_. Sarah, my aunt, liked baking cookies and was obsessed with horses. Neil, my uncle, worked remotely as IT but Amy was too scared to ever ask him for tech help in case he ever thought that she was just like the stupid customers that he vented about.

Then there was the family cape team.

“New Wave is the family team. It’s supposed to be about accountability and stuff, but that’s bull,” Amy said. “Most of the time they just patrol. Sometimes they arrest criminals and help the PRT in big cape fights.”

“That’s _awesome_ ,” I said.

Amy rolled her eyes. “It's not as fun as you think, Vicky. A lot of times they get hurt in those fights, and then they come home and _I'm_ the one who has to clean up the mess.”

“Is it really that bad?” I asked.

" _Yes._ One time Crystal fought Oni Lee, and a grenade got her in the leg. _I_ had to take out all the shrapnel and put the bone fragments back together. She cried the entire time,” Amy said.

That did sound bad. I couldn’t fault Crystal for crying over an injury like that. “Was she okay afterwards?”

“I said I healed her, didn’t I? Didn’t even need a band-aid afterwards. Sarah let her stay home from school though, which is really lucky. Carol would never let me stay home from school if I got hurt… ”

I held onto as much information as I could. Amy's stories helped me put something in the blank spaces in my mind about my family. I wasn’t sure that I would get along with all of them -- it sounded like Eric only understood other people through video games, and Carol was shaping up to be more and more of a tyrant with every word I heard about her -- but hearing about all these things brought a warm feeling to my chest. With Amy’s gossip, I felt like I was regaining a small piece of what I had lost. 

/\  
< ( O ) >  
\/

Carol came back home at 3:30 sharp. I put on a pair of flats that seemed my size and headed out the door.

“Do you want to drive to PHQ, or should I?” she asked, holding up a keychain.

I looked at the car, which was a white, midsize Ford. From what I could see of the dashboard from outside, the controls looked familiar enough. There was a steering wheel, a gearshift lever, a radio, and the usual collection of pedals.

“I can, if you tell me where to go,” I said.

Carol handed me the keys.

Once I sat in the driver's seat, muscle memory took over. Without having to think about it, I took the car out of the driveway and onto the street. My hands easily moved from the steering wheel to the gearshift lever and back.

Carol directed me onto a highway entrance. It didn’t have much traffic, so I sped along at a comfortable 60 miles per hour. Before long, we were inside Brockton Bay.

“That’s where we need to go,” Carol said, pointing at the coast.

My jaw dropped. It was an amazing sight, a small cluster of buildings that bobbed on an artificial island. They were surrounded by a spherical force field, which distorted the colors inside to look cartoonishly bright.

I fought the temptation to press my face against the window to look more closely, and kept my eyes on the road instead.

“ _That’s_ PHQ?” I asked.

“It is,” Carol said. “Now, listen closely to my directions. You’re going to turn left on the road ahead. When we reach the gate, roll the window down and let me speak.”

I followed her instructions. The road led out to the coast, and abruptly ended a few feet from the water. A turnstile blocked my path, not that I was going to drive the car into the ocean anyways.

“Um, I don’t see… “

“This is the gate, Victoria,” Carol said.

I rolled down the window.

A voice crackled from the speaker. “Parahuman Response Team East-Northeast. What is your business here?”

“I am Carol Dallon, and I have a Master/Stranger screening for my daughter at 4:30 today,” Carol said.

“Please wait while we verify your appointment,” the voice said.

A moment later, the turnstile raised, and a path shimmered to life over the water. It had the same color-distorting properties as the bubble around the artificial island had, but with purple lines to clearly mark the edges.

“Woah,” I said. “What is this?”

“It’s meant to keep intruders out of PHQ. The old headquarters were burned down in the 2000s, and Armsmaster took it personally,” Carol said.

At the end of the forcefield road was a parking lot. I found a spot, and Carol guided me into the building.

We passed into a large lobby, which was filled with throngs of people. A tour group passed through into a gift shop, which was full of hero-based merchandise. Troopers walked in and out the doors. The walls were aligned with 30 feet tall posters of Protectorate members, smiling down on us benevolently. Sunlight, distorted into many colors from the forcefield, passed through giant glass walls. 

_Wow._

I wanted to take my time and look over everything slowly, but Carol was already walking to the elevators. I rushed to catch up. 

We went up to the fourth floor. Unlike the open lobby, this floor looked more like a cramped office. To the left, there was a small sitting area with some chairs, and to the right, there was a single receptionist at a desk.

Carol strode to the desk. “I’m here for my daughter's appointment at 4:30,” she said. “Her name is Victoria Dallon.”

The receptionist looked at me. “Can I get your date of birth, hon?”

Nothing came to mind.

Carol spoke up, rescuing me from the awkward silence. “Victoria was born on May 31, 1994. I understand that you want to confirm my daughter’s identity, but she wouldn’t have a Master/Stranger appointment if she knew these things. If you need to know anything else, I can answer your questions.”

After that, the receptionist ignored me in favor of Carol.

A while later, a middle-aged Hispanic man came out of the door, with a stark white lab coat and square glasses that made him look like a scientist. “Victoria Dallon?”

I stood up.

“I’m Sam Guzman, and I’ll be your analyst for today. Please follow me inside. Mrs. Dallon, you should stay in the lobby.”

Sam directed me into hallway, then a small room that looked like it had come straight out of a hospital, with a grey exam table, cabinets, and a computer. A single poster of a forest decorated the walls, right next to a large mirror. It seemed like all of the money for interior decoration had been spent on the lobby, and this room had missed out.

I sat down on the exam table.

Sam turned on the computer and took a seat close to me. “I already have the police report, but it would help to hear this directly from you. Walk me through your interactions with the drone yesterday.”

I told Sam what had happened, and he questioned me about Ghost. What did I think about it? Why did I think it was female? Did I believe in its claims of an alt-Earth origin? What about its Traveler? I tried to answer everything I could.

He typed furiously the whole time, clacking away at the keyboard. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

“So, what are you going to do with this information? Like, no offense, you’re just asking me stuff. I thought the PRT would do… more.” I asked.

“The data will be processed separately by a psychologist and a Thinker with a relevant power,” he said. “It’s better if you don’t know specifics. Makes it harder for you to try to fool the tests.”

“Why would I --” At that moment I thought of Valefor, a villain with the Fallen, who could command people by looking in their eyes. For a long time, the PRT had given him a Stranger rating, because he could command people to forget his commands, letting him create sleeper agents who didn’t know that they had ever been Mastered in the first place. “Nevermind. Point taken,” I said.

The next phase was to test my mental acuity. I was hit with a barrage of memory tests, matching games, trivia questions, and math problems. The quadratic formula leaped effortlessly into my mind, and so did all the stages of mitosis in a cell, but not the name of the mayor of Brockton Bay.

I'd never imagined that Master/Stranger testing could be so boring, yet so exhausting.

“Have you noticed anything strange happening around you? Anything of a parahuman nature?” Sam asked.

“Well, it turns out that my whole family is made of capes, but other than that, no,” I said. “I don’t have any powers, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Are you sure?” Sam pressed.

“Yep. Nothing,” I said.

“You said that you were able to heal after apprehending the two members of the ABB.”

“I said that Ghost healed me. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do that myself.”

He typed something into the computer.

After that, I was sent out to the lobby to wait while results came in. I paced anxiously back and forth, trying to ignore Carol and my worries.

_Please tell me I can get my memories back. Please tell me I can get my memories back._

A teenage boy emerged from the hallway door, handing something to the receptionist. Another patient, probably. I watched him to distract myself from worrying over my screening results. His blonde hair was neatly combed back, framing brown eyes and a square jaw. He wore a button-down shirt that was expertly folded down at the collar, paired with khaki shorts, showing both good taste and the money to back it up.

His eyes met mine briefly, holding my gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Then his head ducked down and he went back into the hallway.

Weird. Maybe he was an intern. That would be a cool job, working at the PRT.

I continued pacing.

Finally, _finally_ , Sam emerged from the office door. He crossed over to talk to Carol and me.

“Your results are in,” Sam said brusquely. “Victoria, outside of retrograde amnesia, you appear to have mental capabilities typical to a female teenager, with above average academic performance for your grade level. You lack the knowledge that would be expected for a long term resident of Brockton Bay. Thus, we theorize that your episodic memory has been removed, but your semantic memory has been left mostly intact.”

I tried to process what that meant. “Episodic memory is about things that I’ve experienced, right? And semantic memory is general knowledge about things?”

“A simplification, but accurate enough,” Sam said. “Episodic memories include specific events, personal facts, general events, and flashbulb memories. Semantic memories are accumulated facts not drawn from personal experience. Normally the two are interdependent, and loss of one can affect the other. In your case, it seems like loss of your episodic memories has also degraded semantic memory relating to information about life in Brockton Bay.”

“Can I ever get my memories back?”

I wanted to match Sam’s clinical tone, but it came out sounding weak and scared instead.

“Not as far as I know,” Sam said.

Carol placed her arm around my shoulder. It should have felt controlling, after everything Amy had told me, but it was surprisingly reassuring. “You’re a strong girl. You'll make it through this,” she said softly.

“Our Thinker says that your emotions regarding the drone are within normal ranges, considering what has happened to you. It is unlikely that your emotions were changed by parahuman means, but that does not preclude unpowered manipulation. I recommend seeking therapy for what has happened.”

I let out a sigh of relief. That was the one good news of it all. At least my thoughts were mine, even though they were based off of missing information. It was a bittersweet comfort.

“If I think Victoria needs therapy, she’ll get it,” Carol said.

Sam handed me a large manila envelope. “Here is the written report of your screening. You can look over it in your own time if you wish.”

He returned into the hallway, leaving me holding the envelope.

Carol hugged me, and by instinct, I returned it. After everything that I had just heard, I wanted human contact, and I didn’t have the energy to care who it was from.

“You’ll make it through this,” she said. “I know you, Victoria, and I know that you’re stronger than this. I’ll support you however you need me to.”

“Thank you, Mom,” I said.

Maybe she wasn’t such a bad parent after all.


	5. Spark 1.4

Over the next week, I settled in with my family, slowly re-learning their routine. Mom was frequently absent, going to work at her law firm or patrolling for New Wave. Dad sometimes went patrolling with her, and when he didn’t, he stayed at home. Amy’s schedule was similar, with the occasional patrols substituted for hospital work. It was summer, so she didn’t have to go to school.

That was one of the few things that I'd lucked out on, that school was out. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with homework and classmates on top of everything else. 

On Tuesday morning, after Mom had left for work and Amy had left for the hospital, the PRT showed up at my house.

I opened the door. Several PRT troopers stood at the front porch. They were still wearing the all-black, depersonalized uniforms that I’d seen them with when they had first taken Ghost, though none of them had containment foam sprayers mounted on their backs. A PRT van was parked on the street behind them.

“Do you have a parent at home? We’d like to talk to them.” A trooper said.

“Let me get Dad,” I said.

I searched through the house, finding Dad in the garage slowly loading up laundry into a washing machine.

“Dad? The PRT wants you for something,” I said.

Dad set the laundry aside and came with me.

“Hello? What is this about?” he asked the troopers.

The trooper in front, who was the tallest of them all, took point. “Hello, Mr. Dallon. Last Wednesday, Miss Dallon turned in a piece of tinkertech to us for investigation,” she said. “Turns out that it’s an AI from an alt-Earth, provisionally named Earth Sol for now. We think it’s friendly. Miss Dallon’s amnesia is a side effect of the powered life support it placed her on.”

I released a breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding. Ghost was friendly. Ghost hadn’t Mastered me. She’d been telling the truth all along.

“Our analysts don’t know if the effect needs renewal or not,” the trooper continued. “To stay on the safer side of things, we’re willing to release the AI to you on probational terms, of a sort. We’ll check Miss Dallon at our power testing clinics with the AI every two weeks, of course, to make sure she stays in good condition.” 

“Of course,” Dad repeated.

She held out a clipboard and a pen.

“Now, Mr. Dallon, we just need you to sign here on pages 1 and 2, to say you’re good with the PRT making sure your daughter stays healthy. If there are any power abnormalities, we may have to keep her, for her own safety.”

“Power abnormalities? Like what?” I asked.

“Anything can happen with powers, Miss Dallon,” the trooper said in a patronizing tone.

Dad took the clipboard and scribbled down his signature.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” the trooper said, beaming. “Smith, get the box.”

A trooper went back to the car on the streets and brought back a small cardboard box, which he gave to me.

After that, the troopers went back to their van. I closed the door and set the box down. 

Dad heaved a long sigh, looking incredibly tired. “You can handle yourself, right Victoria?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good girl,” he muttered, and then left.

I knelt down beside the box, which was lined with packing tape. One side had the words “CAUTION - interdimensional tinkertech” scrawled on the side with a sharpie.

“Ghost, are you in there?” I asked.

“G-guardian? Is that you?” She asked timidly.

“It’s Victoria, yeah. Let me get you out of there.”

I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut through the tape. Ghost zipped out of the box and floated around me, her shell whirling excitedly. She looked more beat up than I remembered.

“It’s so good to see you, I thought they’d keep me f-forever,” she said.

An uneasy feeling rose in my stomach. The haphazard packaging of the box. The new chips and dings on her shell. When combined, it didn’t look good for the PRT. “I hope they weren't too rough with you. What happened?”

“Th-they were going to t-take me apart until I started talking,” Ghost said, shivering. “I had to convince them I was alive. Then they brought a lot of d-different people in to look at me. They didn't believe that I was from another reality until, until I showed them a lot of videos, and then they started asking a lot of questions about it.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Master/Stranger protocols say… well, I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“I think they were trying to figure out the differences between my world and yours, they were really interested in how Ghosts work. They tried to make their own Ghost, but that’s not how it works,” said Ghost.

That part stopped me short. “Do you have a name? I've been calling you Ghost in my head, but that sounds like that’s a title and not a name…”

“I don’t, no,” Ghost said. “I w-was waiting until I found my Guardian to take a name, a lot of Guardians do that and I th-thought you would want to do that, if you don’t mind?” She looked at me hopefully.

I strained my mind, thinking of the possibilities. A name for personal use… Finally, I settled on something. “Vega.”

She bounced in the air, both halves of her shell spinning excitedly. “That sounds perfect, I like that!”

I smiled.

“Want a tour of the house? I’ve spent the last week figuring out where everything is,” I said.

“If you say so,” Vega said.

I took Vega through the living room, then the kitchen and the bathroom on the first floor. Did Ghosts even use bathrooms? Afterwards, I brought her upstairs, to my room.

Vega settled in at the desk, looking at a lineup of stuffed lions.

“What's life like on Earth Sol?” I asked.

“Compared to your world, we're ahead on a lot of things, but, it’s c-complicated,” Vega said, tilting her shell thoughtfully. “The Last City was doing okay when I left, but outside the walls, it's all infested by Fallen and r-remnants of the Red Legion -- aliens from other systems. And the Pyramid Ships, those might have destroyed everything by now. Then there are the Awoken, it's a long story, but basically they're allies of ours, humans who colonized another place and came back changed. Still, we, we’re still much better off than Earth Bet. From what the PRT says, Humanity in your reality hasn’t even made it off of Earth.”

I scowled. “Yes we have! We've been to the Moon!”

“We've been to every single planet in the solar system that's not a gas giant, and to a lot of the moons of the planets that are gas giants,” Vega said proudly. “Before the Collapse, we had major colonies on Venus, Mars, and Titan.”

“Oh,” I said. I decided not to mention that the Moon project had struggled ever since Sphere’s death, and only lived on through the dedicated effort of the Moonwalkers cape team.

“To be fair, t-technically I'm from the future,” Vega said. “For us, the Traveler first showed up all the way back in 2014, you don't have Light or anything yet. The PRT were very excited about that.”

It was 2010 now. 2014 was 4 years off into the future, and it sounded like that had been a long time ago for Vega. To be from an alternate reality _and_ to be a time traveler… Vega was much more impressive than her small frame looked. No wonder the PRT researchers were excited. Her existence alone was worth several papers.

That didn’t mean that they had a right to treat Vega so roughly.

“What _is_ the Traveler? You keep on mentioning it,” I said.

“The Golden Age started when the Traveler arrived in Sol to uplift Humanity,” Ghost said. “It gave people new technology, extended their life spans, and, and terraformed other planets and moons to make them safe to live on. After a few centuries, the Darkness arrived, and attacked Humanity and the Traveler, causing the Collapse. The Traveler used its last bit of strength to create Ghosts like me, to choose worthy Guardians for Humanity.”

“Sounds kind of like Scion. Some people think he’s the source of powers here,” I said.

Vega shook her shell. “They’re not the same thing, the PRT kept on saying that too…”

Vega projected a video into the air. It in it, three helmeted astronauts sat in a spaceship. Their suits were bare of identification or country, allowing them to be anybody in a way that let them stand for everybody. The hatch opened, and they stepped out on a dusty red plain.

“This is on Mars,” Ghost said. “I just r-realized -- just realized this whole video is really long in real time. I’m going to fast forward to the Traveler.”

The video cut to the three of them cresting a ridge. About them hovered a gigantic white orb, shrouded with a swirl of white clouds. Glowing lines traced circles upon its surface. Rain fell onto the ground below, and I swore I saw tiny specks of green in the distance.

It was beautiful. It also looked nothing like Scion. Scion was a golden skinned human man with powers, not a white sphere that looked more like a machine than anything organic. I watched as the Traveler bathed the three astronauts and their vehicle in warm light.

“Is this the Light you keep talking about?” I asked.

“No, it, it’s more than just the visible spectrum,” Vega said. “The Light is the philosophical concept of g-growth and cooperation given power in this world. It breaks all the rules of the universe, or, or it's outside of them. We call this paracausality. It’s outside the bounds of cause and effect, it d-doesn't need a reason, it just _happens_. Lightbearers can control the fundamental forces of the universe using this.” 

“That’s so cool,” I said. “How do I do that?”

“Y-you want to learn now?” Vega asked.

“Is there a reason to wait?” I asked.

“I suppose not,” Vega said. “Can we do this outside, just in case? It'll be safer that way, i-in case anything happens.”

I led Vega to the backyard. It was mostly paved over, with an opening for a small tree to the side for shade.

“How do I do this?” I asked.

“Try meditating? They s-say you need to feel the Light inside you. Will it to do something.” 

I sat down and closed my eyes. If Light was growth and cooperation, then I should try to feel that, right? I willed as much cooperative spirit as possible, trying to feel for something otherworldly. 

Was anything happening? I opened my eyes to check.

Everything was the same as it was before. I closed my eyes again.

Again, I focused on feeling as cooperative as possible. I would make the Light cooperate into doing something. To work outside the rules of reality.

Nothing happened.

 _Fucking work already_ , I ordered the Light.

Vega giggled.

Had I said that aloud? Oh. My face flushed.

“Relax, you’re trying too hard,” Vega said. “Stop forcing it, th-the Light will never give you what you want if you take it by force.”

I closed my eyes again and tried to feel for the Light. My breath slowed, and my body relaxed. In, out. In, out. My only movement was the rise and fall of my chest. 

Deep within, I felt a gentle hum in my bones, pulsing like a second heartbeat. It was warm, comforting, full of the potential of everything that life had been and could be. This, I knew, was Light.

 _Come out,_ I said to it. I opened my eyes.

Light pushed outwards from my body. It pulsed around me in perfect concentric rings, rippling outwards on the grass. It ended in a circle shape, the edge swirling in a flurry with tiny globules of light dancing around me, lighting up the whole room. Static electricity crackled and lifted my hair. It felt strong. Energizing. With this, I could punch my way through a mountain without feeling tired.

I jumped to my feet and whooped. “I did it! I did it!” 

“Good job!” Vega bounced happily in the air.

I held out my fist, and she bumped against it.

I danced inside the circle, reveling in the feeling of the Light. After a short while, it faded.

“That was a really good Rift for a beginner,” Vega said, “Looks like you’re a natural Warlock!”

“What’s that?”

“It’s one of three classes of Guardians. Warlocks are kind of known as the, the wizards among Guardians. There’s a lot of variation in their abilities, some can float, some throw black holes, some shoot lightning, and m-more. A lot of them do research, but they spend plenty of time in the field, too.”

I imagined myself floating along the streets of Brockton Bay, ready to sling black holes at villains. They'd learn to watch out for me!

“How do I do that?” I asked.

“That’s -- you’re jumping ahead of yourself,” Ghost said. “Remember, you're still a new Lightbearer. Keep trying until you can summon a Rift on command.”

I sat down on the grass again. Now that I knew what it was looking for, it should be easy to do, right? I calmed my mind and searched within.

_There you are._

I spent a while summoning Rifts, trying to prove to Ghost that I could do this. Each one left me feeling drained, like I had ran a mile. Paradoxically, it was easier if I didn't try to force it. The more I stressed out over summoning a Rift quickly, the longer it took to create. It was extremely difficult for me to create Rifts back to back, but if I waited about a minute, then I could call the Light back.

“Good job, you’re doing really well! I th-think you can try moving on to the next thing, if you want,” Ghost said. 

I sat up straighter. “Of course I want to. What do I have to do?”

“Every Guardian can use the Light to enhance their movement. It's different with everybody, but generally, Titans boost themselves like they have j-jetpacks, Warlocks float through the air, and Hunters can double-jump, even when they're not touching ground,” Ghost said. “Maybe try… try jumping? Try moving _beyond_ jumping, if that makes any sense?”

I jumped. My feet hit the ground a moment later, like normal.

“You have to _want_ it,” Ghost said. “Don't -- don’t let gravity pull you down.” 

I took a running start and leapt. The moment my feet left the ground, I focused on the sensation, willing myself to burst upwards, jump again, or float. Whatever it was, I would not let gravity work on me.

Time and space compressed around me. The world disappeared.

A split second later, I was back in the world, falling out of the sky towards the ground. My stomach lurched, and I screamed. The ground rushed to meet me face first.

“Fuck fuck fuck!”

Pain. Then nothingness. 

A moment later, I woke up, as if from a deep sleep. Ghost hovered in front of me, blue eye wide with anxiety.

“A-are you okay? I brought you back, but I, I, it’s my first time, I don’t know if I did it right,” she babbled.

I groaned, feeling around my body for any injuries, but didn't find anything. All my limbs worked, nothing felt wrong in my torso, and I didn't feel any pain. I was just as healthy as I had been before hitting the ground. “What the hell just happened?” 

Ghost’s shell whirled anxiously. “You Blinked 8.3 meters into the air. Th-then you hit the ground head-first and died, so I used your Light to resurrect you.”

I looked down at myself. Everything looked fine, including the blouse and pants that I was wearing. There wasn't any pain, not even at the top of my head where I'd impacted the ground. None in my neck, either, no matter how I turned it back and forth, even though it had been the second thing to go. Flexing my arms and legs didn’t trigger any residual feelings of discomfort. I didn't even feel tired.

When Ghost had healed me in the alleyway, I’d also felt fine, but this was an entirely different scale of damage that I had just come back from. 

Resurrection Brutes usually came with severe drawbacks, with limitations for the conditions they could come back from, or consequences for each resurrection. The best example I could think of was Heartsoul, a cape in Florida who had struggled to use her power heroically. She could drink the health from others, and every time she died, her body automatically launched hundreds of tethers from her body to steal back health from everybody around her. She tried to use volunteers where possible, but it was still one of the uglier powers that a parahuman could have.

I wasn't parahuman. I was a Lightbearer, and it seemed like the differences between those things were bigger than I’d thought.

“Victoria? Are you okay? I, I might have messed something up, if you kill yourself I can t-t-try again --”

I suddenly remembered Vega’s presence. “Yeah, I'm fine. You said something about blinking?” 

“It - it’s very obscure. The origins of it are unclear, Hunters and Warlocks each claim that they invented it first. From what I know, Blink is based off of y-- off of your current velocity. It sends you in whatever direction you are already going, but further. Most Guardians don’t bother learning.” 

“I can see why,” I said. I looked at the sky, and shivered. “I think I should take a break for now. I’m going back indoors.”

/\  
< ( O ) >  
\/

That night, Mom called a family meeting over dinner about Vega.

She sat in front of a plate of meatloaf, which formed an absurd contrast to her immaculately-styled business casual outfit. She looked much more like she was at a court case than at a family dinner. I automatically set up straighter to match.

“We will welcome this Ghost as a guest in our house, and expect it to follow the rules of a guest. I’ve set aside a portion of the sitting room to act as a guest bedroom,” Mom said.

“O-okay,” Vega said.

 _She's a person, not an it._ “Her name is Vega,” I insisted. 

“I apologize for that, Vega. The PRT didn’t tell us your name,” Mom said.

Of course it hadn’t been an intentional insult to Vega. I lowered my eyes, suddenly feeling foolish.

“Does anybody have anything else to say?” Mom asked.

Amy’s fingers brushed against Vega’s shell, then pulled away. “Does Vega have to be in _our_ house?”

“She’s helping Victoria, Ames. It’s better to have her here.” Dad said.

“I, I don't actually need to sleep,” Vega said. “You don't have to set aside a place for me. I can dematerialize into Victoria's pocket s-s-space, it’s not -- it isn't that uncomfortable in there. You won't know that I'm there at all.”

Mom and Dad shared a look.

“You’re a guest, and that means we’re going to treat you right,” Mom said. “I insist.”

“A-alright.” Vega said. “Thank you.”

Mom smiled. “Welcome to the house, Vega. We’re happy to let you stay with us.”


	6. Spark 1.5

Vega’s presence changed everything. Before, my parents had mostly seemed to ignore my memory loss. Now, they took the time to explain life at home to Vega, information that I could listen in on and use myself. Amy, who I’d been getting used to as a staunch ally and warm presence, clammed up entirely in Vega’s presence.

Then there was my newfound internet access. Vega had amazing hacking abilities, and could open my laptop and phone for me even though I had forgotten the passwords.

The first thing that I did was search myself up. I was directed to an article on New Wave, where I’d been quoted.

> When asked if she worries about her family’s safety, Victoria Dallon, 10, says, “If my parents retired, that would let evil win. But I wish Auntie Jess was still here.”

_What?_

The article was from half a decade back, about the loss of Jessamine Dorsey, also known as Fleur of New Wave. The team used to be known as the Brockton Bay Brigade, until the members unmasked themselves and rebranded as New Wave. Then some racist asshole had ambushed Jessamine in her civilian identity and killed her for the simple act of being a black woman engaged to a white man. The article questioned whether the New Wave movement could survive after a blow like this. A later edit noted that the murderer, Benjamin Schmidt, had been tried as a minor and sentenced to 15 years, only to be released on parole years ahead of that.

What kind of a world was this where a murderer could kill someone and only get a slap on the wrist for it?

My hands were twitching. Vega bumped against me reassuringly. “I w-won't let that happen to you. If they kill you, I'll bring you back right away.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” I said. “I’m _angry_.”

But it was 6 years in the past, too far to do anything about it. I resolved to ask Amy about Jessamine -- she hadn’t mentioned her yet in any of her gossip, but surely she had to know _something_. Or I’d ask Mom and Dad, if I had to.

I went back to searching up my past, but more cautiously now. There was far more information about the powered members of New Wave than there was on Eric or me, the only two members of the family not to trigger yet. I found a forum thread called Panacea Watch that sent notifications to subscribers whenever she volunteered at a hospital to heal patients, and contained tips and tricks to get seen by her sooner. The posters were a mix of people with actual medical problems and obsessive fans, which added a creepy air to the whole thing. Then there was a magazine interview of Laserdream, AKA my cousin Crystal. I was struck by how approachable Crystal seemed which didn’t match up the image of the distant artist that Amy had given me. Maybe Crystal put up a front in public, and was different in private.

At last, I realized that the information I wanted wasn’t public, and was probably in a more private location. I surreptitiously glanced at Vega, and then opened my browser history. 

“Don’t you dare look at this.”

Vega’s form shimmered and disappeared. At the same time, I felt her awareness slide into the back of my mind.

“I, I’m not,” she said.

When Vega was dematerialized like this, she went into a pocket space tied to me where only I could hear her by default. I’d found out that last part when Amy had asked me why I’d started talking to myself. Vega could communicate with other people while in my pocket space by sending messages to nearby electronics, but she usually preferred not to. Most importantly, she couldn’t see while dematerialized, though some other senses gave her a peripheral awareness of what was going on, so my browser history was probably safe.

My last visited site was on July 22, 2010. That was about a week ago, when I had died and come back. I clicked to expand the list.

> Thursday, July 22, 2010
> 
> Dartmouth Essay - Wooble Notes  
> does cornell have sports scholarships - Bing search  
> Cornell University - Wikipedia  
> Cornell Essay - Wooble Notes  
> what is cornel acceptance rate - Bing search  
> Tasklist - Wooble Notes  
> My Notes - Wooble Notes  
> My Notes - Wooble Notes  
> can pigeons fly in space - Bing search

My eyebrows went up. The old Victoria Dallon must have been really confident in herself if she was applying to big-name Ivies like Dartmouth and Cornell. Hadn’t she only been a junior, too? No, it was summer, so the ID card would be from the year before, and out of date. She would’ve been a rising junior, going into senior year.

College felt like such a distant concern now. What could I even say on the applications? “I’m sure I had a great essay, but I was recently raised from the dead by a robot from an alt-Earth, so I’m not sure what it is anymore. Let me tell you why I’m a great fit for your school.”

I looked at the other dates, and randomly clicked open a box.

> Monday, July 5, 2010
> 
> why are men trash - Bing search  
> why are men trash - Bing search  
> why are men trash - Bing search  
> P!nk - So What (Official Music Video) - WooTube  
> thank u, next - WooTube  
> Shut Up and Let Me Go (WE ARE FURY Remix) - WooTube  
> APOLOGIZE lyrics - WooTube  
> Stay - WooTube  
> Fontana - Wooble Maps  
> miss militia new uniform - Bing search  
> Miss Militia wearing something new? | Parahumans Online  
> Miss Militia wearing something new? | Parahumans Online  
> Armsmaster vs Triumph | Parahumans Online  
> Outrage over Eidolon’s penguin summons… not a charity’ | Parahumans Online

I stopped scrolling. From the search results, it seemed like I’d either gone through a sudden man-hating spree or had just been through a breakup. Maybe both. Tuesday, July 6 had even more misandrist ravings in the search boxes. I checked back on Sunday, July 4, and found searches for “how to know I should break up.”

Had I been the one to initiate it? If yes, then why did I seem so furious afterwards? Every time I thought I was getting a handle on the old Victoria Dallon, something like this had to pop up to surprise me, with no clear answers. Like Auntie Jess, this was something else that hadn’t come up in any of Amy’s gossip. I felt surprisingly betrayed by that.

It felt silly to equate the two things. Selfish. Victoria Dallon’s mysterious breakup and her aunt murdered in a hate crime. Both equally lost to me now.

“Fucking why,” I muttered, putting my hands up against my head. 

Vega spoke for the first time in a while. “You d-don’t have to do this you know, most Guardians don't spend this much time researching their past life. Actually, th-the Vanguard forbids it.”

“No offense, but that sounds really authoritarian,” I said.

“It, it’s for a good reason,” Vega said. “Guardians are supposed to protect Humanity, th-they shouldn’t be distracted from that. It never ends well. Otherwise, they might be like Ana Bray, she faked her own death in the Battle of Twilight Gap just so she could go find out about her past life.”

“Good for her,” I said. “My parents know all about their current lives and they’re still able to do hero work. Clearly it hasn’t distracted them.”

“Y-your world is different,” Vega said. “Most Guardians are raised c-centuries, even millenia, after their first death. In the beginning, some of them tried to track down their origins, only to find that their families were long dead, or that the places they lived in had been destroyed. Some of them did terrible things before they were chosen, but it, it’s not fair to judge them for something they can’t remember when we don’t even know the c-cirumstances, right? It’s easier to treat them as entirely new people, and to give everyone a fresh start.”

“Yeah, but that’s all on Earth Sol. This is Earth Bet. Not knowing what I did doesn’t wipe it from the past, it just means I’m more likely to make a mess of it now,” I said.

“I, I just thought it would be helpful to know,” Vega said. “You aren’t tied to your past life. You can be someone else.”

My whole family wanted me to be the old Victoria Dallon. It was in every interaction where Amy would joke about my past self, every smile that Dad had when I did something familiar to him, every compliment that Mom gave me when I acted how she expected. Sometimes I felt like I was an imposter wearing her body. Maybe if the police hadn’t sent me home… but what else should I have done, run off with Vega and live on the streets? “I think it’s too late for that.”

“You’re young, you have time,” Vega said.

I got up and stretched, no longer in a mood to go pouring through any of my past history anymore. Maybe Vega was right. I didn’t have to find all this stuff out immediately.

“Let’s go do something else, Vega.”

I went downstairs and outside to the yard. Vega materialized next to me, giving all her petals a shake like a dog emerging from a puddle.

Who was I, if I wasn’t Victoria Dallon? A scholar. A Lightbearer. What if I stopped chasing an identity that I would never get back fully and embraced my reality now? A Guardian of the people from criminal scum like Schmidt.

First I had to master my abilities. I started by summoning a Rift. After everything that had happened, it helped me attune myself to the Light within. This was something that _I_ could do, without comparisons to past capabilities. The pulses of the circle slowed into a steady beat as I gathered myself.

Next were my Blinks. I looked at Vega. “Ready to follow up on what you said? Bring me back immediately if I die?”

“Of course.”

I steeled myself, trying to block out the terrifying impact of free falling to the ground. Blink was highly velocity-based and sent me further in whatever direction I was already going. Last time, I had Blinked right after jumping, so it had sent me upwards. Now, I should be safe if I kept to the ground.

I stepped forwards, digging deep within me to find the same feeling as before, where I had warped through the world. To move forwards, whatever happened… 

Spacetime reluctantly opened for me -- and then I was in the middle of the backyard. 

My feet tangled with each other and I fell to the ground. I instinctively threw up my hands to protect my head, waiting for the inevitable _crunch_.

“A-are you okay, Victoria?”

Vega’s voice snapped me back to reality. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m… fine,” I said.

It hadn't gone perfectly, but it was much better than last time. I got up, and tried again. I went through this several more times, walking at a slow pace and Blinking, until the memories of my first death were accompanied by a dozen successful Blinks.

Then I started changing things up. I kept on testing my Blink, and found that the faster I moved before Blinking, the further I went. Vega provided helpful measurements: up to 18 meters, or 54 feet in more civilized measurements. I kept all my momentum after rematerializing, so it was easier not to trip if I landed in a run instead of staying still.

Now I just had to try moving vertically. I made a small hop and Blinked as I reached the peak of my jump. Then I fell back down, into the grass. My knees shuddered from the impact.

It was terrifying. And exhilarating.

I eyed the tree to the side of the yard. “Vega, what happens if I Blink through something solid?”

“You won’t go through -- well it depends, the more mass that’s in the way the harder it is to Blink past it. M-most Guardians rematerialize if there’s a wall or something big in their way.”

I winced. “Do they get stuck _inside_ or something?”

“No, they just rematerialize in front of the object, but, I guess it could hurt if they are moving extremely fast?”

I moved in a sedately walk towards the tree and Blinked. The world opened around me, allowing me to pass freely -- _fuckity fuck what is that?_ The atoms of the tree refused to bend to my will, and I was spat back into existence inches from its trunk, still taking that extremely slow step.

Further tests gave me the same result. Blinking was easiest when I had enough clearance for my whole body to pass through normally. For whatever reason, large objects just did not want to let me through.

I leaned against the tree, having become far too familiar with the stubborn shape of it in the past few minutes. “In sum, I’m a resurrection brute with mover powers and the ability to make some lightshows, but not a lot of offensive capability. Not the worst for a hero, I guess. Is that right, Vega?”

Vega ducked her head. “I, um, I -- I should have told you, your Rifts help you impose your will on that specific place. The ones you make empower you, any a-attack you make from one will be augmented with Light to be stronger than it normally would be.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s good to know.”

“I think it might help to see a, a, an experienced Guardian in action, with some proper gear and weapons. I think… I have a video of one of Ikora Rey’s Crucible matches, i-if you want to see? That should let you see multiple Guardians all at once.”

“Go ahead.”

Vega projected a video into the air, which showed movement of disembodied arms holding a gun. It had to be a body cam of some sort. The person carrying the camera -- probably Ikora Rey -- sprinted through a corridor, then slid to turn a corner into a much more open space. The moment she did so, two people turned around, one with a sleek blue cape and hood, and another in a blood-red trenchcoat. They shot wildly at Ikora. Bullets barely passed over the camera. In response, she tossed a brightly colored orb of light that exploded at the pair’s feet, bolts of lighting reaching out to them. Their bodies disintegrated into ash. 

A third enemy came running into the area with a speed far faster than his heavy armor suggested. He threw a flaming hammer, which Ikora sidestepped. In a single smooth motion, she lifted the gun in her hands, bringing the scope up against the camera, and fired. He fell to the ground.

“She's killing them!” I cried, shocked.

“I know, isn't it amazing? She's so good!” Vega said enthusiastically.

I looked at her. “How can you say that about _murder_?”

Vega cocked her shell quizzically. “These aren’t final deaths, Victoria, they come back -- their Ghosts bring them back perfectly fine. It’s just training?”

For a moment, I couldn’t find anything to say. All I could think about was the two people flaking away into ash, the spurt of blood coming from the armored cape’s eyehole. “That's way too fucking brutal to be training.”

“It isn't that bad, Guardians do, do, they do worse things to themselves all the time just for fun,” Vega protested. “Besides, they have to learn how to fight somewhere, b-better to die a few times in Crucible than to die a final death elsewhere.”

In the background, Ikora zoomed around, shooting lightning from her outstretched fingertips. Anybody who crossed her path died.

A purple arrow made of light thudded into the ground next to her. A dark line jumped from the arrow to her body, sapping away her lightning. Then, the person with the cape that she had killed before stepped out from behind a rock. The crack of a gun sounded three times.

The feed stopped.

How could Vega cheer on this casual bloodsport? Heroes didn't act this way! They didn't kill, and they definitely didn't do it as cruelly as Ikora had. In the rare cases that they did, it was always in self-defense, or to save other people. Heroes definitely didn't kill each other while _training_!

“I'm never going to do that,” I said. “That's not how we do things here.”

“You d-don't have t-to,” Vega said quickly. “Maybe that wasn't the best th-th-thing to show you, but it's j-just in good fun, promise! Nobody dies in there permanently, Lord Shaxx make sure of that.”

I thought back to my own resurrections. They didn't seem to leave any lasting damage, but there was still something unsettling about treating death so casually.

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “These people are really powerful, but… are there ways to use these abilities nonlethally?”

“I, I think so,” Vega said. “Guardians can't k-kill everything out there with their Light, if they could we’d have reclaimed Sol centuries ago. You’d have to experiment to do it on purpose, though. But, if you don't mind me asking, isn't it easier if, if you make sure but your enemy is dead? I mean, if you leave them alive, won't you have to fight them again later?”

She looked at me with her bright blue eye, earnest and open. Between her stutter, small size, and shyness, I’d thought of Vega as peaceful and noncombative. Seeing her be so bloodthirsty was disturbing.

I thought of Schmidt, who hadn’t even stayed in jail for his full sentence. Would the world be better if he had been executed for killing Jessamine Dorsey? A life for a life?

“If we kill them, then that just means that we'll have sunk to their level,” I said. “Heroes are supposed to be an inspiration, not to be as bad as the evil they fight.”

Hearing it out loud, it didn’t sound as convincing as it should be. But it was true. Heroes didn’t kill.

Vega didn’t say anything, only blinking her blue, pixelated eye. 

“Anyways, we’ve gotten way off topic,” I said. “I get what you were trying to say, Vega. I was definitely underestimating what I can do. It’s just… a lot to take in.”

There had to be non-lethal ways of using the Light. I’d have to do a lot more testing, to make sure that any new abilities I learned wouldn’t kill anyone. If worst came to worst, I’d stick to what I could do right now, with my Blinks and Rifts.

There had to be a way of being a hero with my powers. For Jessamines of this world, killed for nonsensical reasons. For the young Victoria Dallon, who had rightfully said that if we sat back and retired from the fight, evil would win.


	7. Spark 1.6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit Jan 4, 2021: the last version of this chapter had multiple issues, so it was overhauled and rewritten. Thank you to Ridtom especially for autopsying the corpse to see what had gone wrong and finding all the nice, healthy organs that could be kept and donated to a new version of the chapter.

I spent the rest of the day waiting for a good moment to approach Mom and Dad, nervous energy bundling up inside of me. An opportunity came in the evening, when Dad came back from grocery shopping. I watched as he brought everything inside and waited for him to get settled in. And then waited some more.

_ Yeah, more than a little nervous. _

From inside her pocket space, Vega said, “Are, are you going to tell them?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just… give me a moment.”

“You know what to do, you spent so much time rehearsing that it would be hard not to,” Vega said. “I believe in you.”

_ Thank you. I’m glad someone has my back here.  _

I stepped forwards, swallowing my fear.

“Hey, Mom, Dad.” I said. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Of course, Victoria,” Mom said, smiling.

I started on my pitch. “I want to join New Wave. With my powers, I can be an asset to the team. I can teleport, empower myself and others, and regenerate from damage. Vega’s got some good tinkertech designs that I can use, too. You need all the help you can get out there, and I can give it.”

“That's our Vicky, all right,” Dad said, a smile on his face. It was a strong smile, like the sun after a cloudy day.

For a moment, Mom looked pensive, almost sad, before smoothing the emotion away. “We’d need to discuss it as a team with Sarah and Neil.”

“Nobody’s on patrol now, right? We can do it now,” Dad said.

“Let me call them and see if they’re available,” Mom said. She fished out her phone and went into another room, too far away for me to hear.

I resisted the urge to fidget nervously. Vega buzzed comfortingly in the back of my mind.

“Don’t worry about her,” Dad said, nodding his head in Mom's direction. “Your mom doesn’t like things changing, especially after that recent scare we had with you, but she’ll come around. We all knew it had to happen someday.”

“You knew that I’d be given powers from an alt-Earth?” I asked.

“Not like  _ that _ , but we knew that you’d get powers someday,” Dad said. “Kids of capes usually get powers, and after Crystal we figured that it would probably happen to the rest of you too. Now you'll be on the team with the rest of the family.”

“Only if Mom lets me on,” I said.

“Don’t worry about that,” Dad said. “You’ll do great on the team. She’d be blind not to see that.”

“Thank you,” I said. I meant it too. I wasn’t used to seeing my Dad like this, in the limited time that I knew him as a parent.

After a while longer, Mom came out of the room. “Sarah wants to see Victoria before deciding on anything. She and Neil are free if we go over now.” 

We went outside, Mom and Dad leading me down the street. It was the first time that the three of us had really just been out and about together, and I didn’t know how to feel about that. After a few minutes, we reached another house, taller and narrower than the one that I lived in, with a lush garden in front.

Mom rang the doorbell. A second later, a young woman opened the door, brushing long blond locks out of cheerful looking eyes. This had to be Crystal Pelham, my cousin. Her feet hovered a few inches off the ground.

_ Wow. _ I knew from my research that she could fly, but it was different seeing her use her powers up close.

“Come in, we’re all ready for you,” Crystal said. She gave me a warm smile as we entered.

Crystal's house was smaller but cosier. We entered a living room with a single large, plush couch, facing a TV and Playstation. Multiple CD containers lay strewn about by the sides. The ground was filled with a plush carpet surface. There was a flight of stairs by the entrance, like my house, but this one had no railings. Crystal indicated a nearby table, and we sat down.

Sarah and Neil were already there. Sarah looked like an older version of Crystal, but with a flannel shirt and mom jeans. Neil was a large man, with blond hair cut in no particular style and a slightly creased polo. Their outfits weren’t nearly as good looking as they could be, but in the normal parent way, giving them a down to earth feel.

Sarah turned to look at me. “How are you, Victoria?”

“I’m good,” I said. “You?”

“I spent the day mucking out stalls at Whispering Creek. Nothing glamorous, I can tell you,” Sarah said, with a small laugh. “I’d like to focus on you and get a sense of where you are and why you want to join the team. Carol gave me the basics of your unusual trigger and the amnesia, but not the specifics.”

I launched into my prepared speech. “I’m a Lightbearer. I’ve been granted powers by an interdimensional traveler from Earth Sol and can teleport, empower others, and heal from damage. With this, I can be an asset to the team… ” I repeated the same thing that I’d told Mom and Dad.

Sarah and Neil looked at each other. I couldn’t tell what they were thinking.

“We want to know how you are, not just what powers you have, Victoria,” Sarah said. “We’re family. We care about you.”

I shifted uncomfortably.  _ Do you really? Or do you just care about the Victoria that’s gone? _ “My mind is fine. I know how the world works, and I can still think about things. The only thing missing is, like… personal stuff.” I waved my arm around vaguely.

“Do you know who we are, Victoria?” Neil asked gently.

“You're my uncle, and Sarah’s my aunt on my mom's side,” I said.

“Nuncle,” Neil corrected. A look of sadness crossed his face. “You used to call me Nuncle Neil.”

Sarah placed an arm on his shoulder. “Carol told us,” she said quietly.

“I didn’t think it would be this bad,” he replied, just as quietly.

“With everything said, I think it would be useful to have a refresher on what we do,” Sarah said. “There’s a lot of different ways to participate in New Wave. Crystal is a student, so she primarily does patrols, and we cover for her when she has tests and major projects due. Amy volunteers at the hospital. Mark and I are the most available, so we’re always on-call and are the first line of response. Carol runs finances for all of us. My first thought is that if you were on the team, you would do something similar to Crystal, where you have a patrol schedule that’s compatible with school and extracurriculars.”

“Don't forget college apps,” Mom said.

“That's it?” I said. “I can fight with you. You don't have to worry about keeping me safe -- I’m a Brute, if anything I’m safer than the rest of you.”

Then Crystal spoke up. “It’s not about that, Vic. You’ll see more action than you think while patrolling. We’ve talked about it before -- back when I first joined you used to ask me all the time what it was like. It's a good way to learn what you're doing and get a feel for the city. Powers can muck things up and you’ve got, uh, extra alt-Earth stuff too. Caping is a really intense thing to add to that.”

“You’re young, you have a lot of time to do hero work,” Neil said. “We don’t want you to suffer in school because you’re jumping into this or make your situation more complicated than it already is.”

It was nice of them to be so concerned, but annoying, too. “I want to help. You don’t need to coddle me.”

“Hey, we can work out the details of this later. None of it is final anyways,” Crystal said. “Why don’t you show us what you can do, Vic?”

I stood up from my chair and Blinked backwards. Then I Blinked up the stairs. “This is my Blink. It’s a momentum-based teleport, so I don’t have to see where I’m going. I can go pretty far with it if I want. My current record is at 54 feet, if I’m running as fast as I can when I do it. The only limit is that I can’t pass through solid objects. There’s some resistance when I try.”

I climbed back down the stairs into the more open space by the TV. Then I reached deep for the Light inside me and summoned it as a Rift. Bright circles rippled outwards on the floor.

“This is an Empowering Rift,” I said. “When I stand in it, all my attacks hit harder, even if I’m using a weapon. It works on allies too.”

“Does it affect powers?” Sarah asked.

I paused to consider. “I don’t know.” 

“Why don’t we try?” Sarah asked. “Neil, can you get the targets?”

She stepped into the Rift. Light washed over her, crackling over her skin and making her hair rise with static electricity. She pushed her hand outwards into the air, and a concave purple forcefield appeared over the wall. It shimmered strangely where the ceiling lights reflected off of it. Then some red forcefields appeared too, covering over the TV and the Playstation.

“Eric won’t be happy if any of this gets damaged,” Crystal said.

“You’re right, he won’t. Thank you,” Sarah said. A line of purple forcefields appeared over the red around the TV and Playstation. “Neil, I’m ready when you are.”

Neil tossed a clay pigeon into the air. Sarah shot a laser from her hand, and the clay pigeon exploded into dust.

“Well, that definitely hit harder than usual. Neil, give me another?” Sarah said.

Neil threw again, and the target exploded into dust again.

“Let me try,” Crystal said. She sent a red beam of light at the clay pigeon, and it fragmented into pieces that were charred black. She frowned. “I didn’t mean to burn it that much.”

I took careful notes in my head. This was the most power usage I’d ever seen from anyone else, and it was  _ awesome _ . The slight differences between Crystal and Sarah’s lasers was really interesting, too.

“This Rift might be more than Crystal and I need in the field,” Sarah said.

“It’s meant to be used with weapons, not powers,” I said. “Vega’s got some ideas for things that I can use for this. Weapons and other gear, if you want to see.”

“Of course we do. It helps to know as much as possible for this.” Sarah said. “Just give me a moment while I clean this up.”

She bent down to the floor and  _ picked up _ a purple forcefield by the edge, then created another dustpan-shaped forcefield below it and dismissed the one on top. The debris from the clay pigeons fell onto the dustpan field, which she tipped into a trashcan. She repeated the process for the next pieces of forcefield covering the floor.

It was the most ridiculous use of a cape power that I had ever seen, but there was a certain logic to it. Why bother to sweep the floor when you could use powers to clean it?

I whispered quietly, “Vega, I’m going to bring you out. You know the tinkertech better than I do, and they should get a chance to meet you.”

I felt a shiver of resistance. The equivalent of a surly headshake.

“You can’t just avoid people forever, you know. You’ll have to talk to them sometime.”

Vega continued to hide away, making it hard to summon her. I might be able to force her out of her pocket space if I tried, but I didn’t want to do that.

“Come on, we talked about this. I barely understand how your designs work, and that’s when you’re explaining it. Your world’s tech is way too advanced for me, and I won’t be able to do it justice.”

I felt vibrations like a resigned sigh, and then Vega materialized over my palm. “H-hello. I’m Vega, Victoria’s Ghost.”

_ Score. _

I looked up to see the entirety of New Wave watching us. Mom’s mouth was thinned into a flat line, and Sarah and Neil were exchanging looks again. That conversation with Vega must not have been as discreet as I thought.

“Are you the AI that brought Victoria back?” Sarah asked, eyebrows knitted.

“Yes,” Vega said.

“We don't have AI on Earth Bet, so the closest comparisons we have to you are entirely fictional. I apologize if this is overly blunt, but how exactly were you… made?” Sarah asked.

Vega’s eye went distant, and then refocused. “I, nobody c-coded me into existence like in your media. I'm an inorganic life form made from pieces of the Traveler after the Darkness attacked it, I was supposed to find someone to give my Light to, and I ch-chose Victoria. Every Ghost is different, but this is the same, that we’re all supposed to find a worthy person to give the Light to.”

“Isn’t it contradictory to call yourself an inorganic life form?” Neil asked.

“I, I have a mind,” Vega said. “It runs on electricity, but yours does too, doesn’t it? It shouldn’t matter if it’s stored in circuits or flesh, thoughts are thoughts.”

“Man, this takes me way back. I used to have a bunch of buddies about this in college that argued about this all the time,” Neil said, with a laugh. He extended his hand. “I’m Neil, by the way. Never thought I’d be meeting someone like out of those thought experiments!”

Vega flated forward and wiggled a petal in his hand.

The tension in the room dropped. It was as if Neil’s handshake was some sort of unofficial approval, and the rest of his family was free to relax.

“I’m Crystal,” Crystal said with a wave. “Thanks for taking care of my baby cousin, Vega.”

“I’m Sarah, also known as Lady Photon in costume,” Sarah said. “Now, I remember that you wanted to show some tinkertech designs?”

“Y-yes, I got sidetracked,” Vega said. She projected an image of a sleek helmet that covered the head entirely. The front part held a clear faceplate with a narrow visor, while the rest was made of shiny metal.

“Earth Bet doesn't have as advanced technology as Earth Sol, there's no glimmer to reprogram, but, but, if you get me the raw materials I can transmat everything into place. It’s just a matter of choosing where the molecules go,” Vega said. “This is a basic helmet for Victoria while she’s in the field. It has radar displays and maps projected onto the inside. It’s made of spinmetal, that’s basically f-filigreed metal, if I had to explain it quickly.” 

The image flipped around, to show the inside visual display of a segmented circle with some red parts and an ammo tracker in the bottom.

“That puts a barrier between her and the public and we don’t want that,” Sarah said. “New Wave focuses on keeping our identities open for accountability as capes, and the media has a field day whenever they think that we’re going back on that commitment, even if we’re not trying to. Could you project this information into the air, like how you're doing with these diagrams?”

Vega shook her shell in a way that I’d come to recognize as a  _ no. _ “I, I could, but that’ll let everybody see it, even your enemies…”

“What if the visor was widened and shortened to only cover my eyes?” I asked. “It won’t be much more of a barrier than glasses are, and those are pretty accepted.”

“That can work. Is that all?” Sarah asked.

“There’s more,” Vega said. “As part of her power, Victoria can keep three weapons on hand for easy access. I have designs for them, from Earth Sol. It’s traditional for Guardians to have a kinetic, energy, and heavy weapon each, but Victoria and I talked about it, and we think two energies and one heavy is more suited to the situation in Brockton Bay.”

I watched the rest of New Wave nervously. I’d told Vega to start with the helmet design, because it was much easier to sell. The helmet was the metaphorical foot in the door for these weapons. By grouping all these designs together, Vega classified them as  _ tinkertech _ , not guns. That was also why I wasn’t going to carry a kinetic weapon, because as far as I could tell, Earth Sol’s kinetic weapons were just like normal guns, and just as lethal.

Vega projected three schematics into the air. The first was of a large compound bow. Each end had a system of pulleys that connected to the bowstring.

“Th-this is Subtle Calamity, which Victoria can use to make ranged attacks, it’s a compound bow, so it’s easier for a novice to learn. The arrows are infused with void energy -- um, you can think of it as the energy of a vacuum.”

The next was a long shotgun with a white shell around a black barrel. The butt of it was wrapped in blue ribbon, which added an elegant look to the whole thing.

“For close range, Victoria can use this shotgun, Retold Tale. It also uses void energy, but this time to propel each round. I’ve adjusted the amount of energy so that within the first 8 meters it’ll hurt, but it won’t kill. After that the spread becomes too inconsistent to reliably hit anything.”

The last was the rocket launcher. It had a long black barrel, surrounded by white metal to act as a sight and frame for it to be hoisted onto a shoulder. A golden lion roared from the front of it, with more gold lines coming from it to decorate the rocket launcher.

“Last but not least is  _ Gjallarhorn _ !” Vega said enthusiastically. “It shoots rockets with wolfpack rounds that split apart and track the target. This thing can destroy spider tanks, Hive gods, Vex minds, and anything else you want it to! It’s good for fighting big targets, the Brutes of your world.”

Uncle Neil shook his head. “Capes and guns don’t mix,” he said.

“W-why not? I know that in your world you don’t like k-killing, but sometimes, if there are enemies that are really tough, or, or that you have to take down--”

Mom interrupted. “We are heroes. We do not kill, unless in exceptional circumstances. Hostage situations gone bad or a villain that has gone beyond the pale. Unintelligent minions. But carrying guns will make others think that we are willing to escalate against them first, which is the last thing we want the public to think.”

“We can’t advertise ourselves as Dirty Harry wannabes,” Dad added.

I gave Vega an annoyed look. I’d  _ told _ her to be careful about this. Now I had to salvage the conversation.

“These aren't  _ guns  _ as you know them. They’re tinkertech from Earth Sol. One of them is a bow, which isn’t a gun at all, and the other one is dialed down so it’s much less dangerous than a normal shotgun.” I turned to the rest of New Wave and put on my most pleading expression. “All powers are dangerous. These weapons aren't that much worse than your own powers. Lasers, light weapons, and exploding orbs can be just as lethal, but you know how to be responsible for them and avoid killing people.  _ Please  _ let me show I can be responsible too!”

Mom's face tightened. She crossed her arms. “How much will these weapons cost?”

“Um, about $1 per pound for steel for Retold Tale and Gjallarhorn, and $3 per pound for fiberglass for Subtle Calamity. D-depending on where exactly the material is from, it’s between $30 and $40 total,” Vega said.

“Not the rocket launcher,” Mom said. Her tone was final.

“I agree, that’s too far,” Dad said. “I don’t think you need that many weapons anyways. And it’s less red-tape if the PRT gets nervous when you’re out on the field with your equipment.”

I sent him a betrayed look. He’d been so excited about bringing me onto the team, and now  _ this _ was his way of repaying me?

“I can still have Subtle Calamity and Retold Tale, right?” I asked.

“Gjallarhorn is total overkill, but the rest don’t sound that much more powerful than my lasers,” Crystal said.

“We’ll need to see full demonstrations before bringing it out onto the field, but from what you’ve shown now, it seems reasonable to build Subtle Calamity and Retold Tale to test it out,” Sarah said. She grimaced. “You might want to rename that bow. It doesn’t match up with the impression we’re trying to give.”

The rest of New Wave slowly nodded their heads.

_ It’s as good as I expected. _ I breathed a sigh of relief while Vega let out an excited chirp.

When Vega had first showed me her collection of weapon schematics, I'd been skeptical too, but over time, I had found myself increasingly attached to the ideas of them. Being able to make them and hold them in my hands, even two out of three, was surprisingly exciting.

But this wasn’t over yet.

“Last thing. I came up with some ideas for branding. Names and sketches, mostly, based around a bunch of themes. Vega can design tech for me to put in a costume, but I thought you’d want to give some input on what it looks like.” I said.

Vega, seizing her chance, disappeared back into her pocket space. I made a mental note to work on her socialization later.

“Branding is a group activity in New Wave,” Mom said. “It has a process and for very good reason.”

I flushed.  _ Did I make a mistake? _

“Don’t worry, Vic, what Auntie Carol means is that I usually make the final drawings to give to the manufacturers, because I’m the best at art. I’ll stick to your vision as close as possible,” Crystal said. “Tell us what you’re thinking of.”

“There’s three ideas,” I said. “One based around space and stars, Altair, another for the general mover package I have, Blitz, and a general sci-fi theme, Railgun.” I handed out the sketches I’d made for each. They were all rough and loose -- I wasn’t a very good artist.

The first paper, labeled ‘Altair,’ had a sketch of a white high-low dress, a skirt that was shorter in front than in the back. It was a compromise between the vitality of a miniskirt and the stately flow of something longer. A single gold line ran down the front until it hit my waist, where it split out in a flare. This was the sketch I’d spent the most time on, and the one I was proudest of.

The next one, ‘Blitz,’ was based around movement, and had a long white cape to emphasize it. The rest of it was similar to Carol’s costume as Brandish, with a logo of a bullet moving in a zig-zag line, but with cyan accents instead of orange. Vega said it didn’t feel right for a Warlock to wear a cape the way that Hunters did, but personally I thought that it was unfair to let the traditions of Earth Sol stop me from looking good.

‘Railgun,’ on the other hand, leaned even more into the tinkertech aspect to have high-tech looking pauldrons, gauntlets, and boots wrapped up in an armored trenchcoat. It was the concept I’d come up with first, when I’d asked Vega what sort of things Guardians normally wore. It was the most aggressive looking of them all.

“Blitz as a name has bad associations, Vic,” Uncle Neil said. “It might work in another city, but not here. We don't want people to associate us with the Empire, even as a possible joke.”

“Would they really?” I asked.

“The public will latch onto anything if you let them,” Mom said. “A similar powerset as an Empire cape, an innocent comment meant to stay private, and the damage will be as good as done in their minds.”

“So Blitz is out, then? What about the rest?” I asked.

“I feel like I’ve heard the name Railgun before,” Dad said.

Crystal typed something into her phone. “Taken by a Tinker in Detroit. A villain too, so that’s not great.”

I mentally kicked myself -- I should have checked for that. Technically it wasn’t  _ illegal _ to have the same cape name as someone else, but the overall package of cape name, costume, and persona counted as intellectual property, and a cape could be sued for merchandising it if any part of it was taken from something else. It was the same reason that nobody named themselves after book or movie characters anymore -- there was a famous case where Disney had sued a Master who made cute animal constructs that had tried to style herself after Cinderella.

“Hey, it’s not all bad,” Crystal said. “Your first concept is kind of cool. It’s got a good silhouette and a memorable enough design. I can come up with a refined version on the computer for the manufacturers. Does the name mean anything?”

“Altair is the name of a star,” I said. “It’s, like, part of a constellation called the Summer Triangle and rotates so fast that it squishes into an oval, not a sphere. I thought it would be cool. And I like the light theme. Feels right.”

Crystal held up her hands in mock surrender. “Ugh, science. Don’t tell me any more, please.”

Mom said, “Altair is too obscure for the general public to understand, and what the public doesn't understand, they soon forget. Cross that out.”

“We can keep the costume ideas and give them different names. Something else in the star theme could work,” Neil said thoughtfully. “Shooting Star?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Because I shoot things, and I’m a star? Is that supposed to be a pun?”

Neil grinned. “You got it.”

“I’m afraid that Shooting Star works even less,” Sarah said. “It’ll be hard to say the full name on the field, and the shortened form, Star, is too generic. The public will find some form of it that they like better, and there’s no way to make sure that it will be complimentary.”

“Is this about Photon Mom?” Neil asked. “It’s not so bad of a name, honey. You’re a great mom.” He put his arm around her waist and leaned in.

Sarah peeled his arm off. “You know I don’t like it.”

“Yeah Dad, it’s terrible. You haven’t seen how weird people get about it in uni,” Crystal said with a shudder. “They keep on forgetting that  _ that’s my mom _ .”

“Altair doesn’t fit with the naming patterns that New Wave uses,” Mom said. “Brandish, Lady Photon, Flashbang, Manpower, Laserdream, these are all existing words or sometimes a pair of words put together. We’ve never used a proper noun for a cape name before.”

“I thought that Panacea was the name of a Greek goddess?” Dad asked.

“If it is, it’s been used as a word for long enough that nobody thinks of it as a proper noun now,” Mom said. “If you insist on keeping the space theme, why not go for Aurora, or Nova? Alternatively, you could go for a light theme, and name yourself Radiance.” 

I shook my head. “I really like the name Altair. It feels right.”

“The public won’t like it just because you will,” Mom said.

“Oh, Carol, if Victoria wants to use the name Altair, we should let her. It’s serviceable enough, and we shouldn’t stop her just because we all happened to name ourselves some way twenty years ago,” Sarah said. “Amy and Crystal both have names that are different from the rest of the group in some way, and things have gone fine for them.”

Mom sniffed. “Victoria, if you really want to use Altair as your cape name, knowing the drawbacks, I won’t stop you.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I want that as my name.”

“We're in agreement then,” Sarah said. “Victoria's cape name will be Altair. Crystal can come up with a good logo for it, and then we’ll send in an order to the manufacturers.” 

“Welcome to the team, Victoria!” Dad said, beaming.

_ Is this it? Am I finally joining New Wave? _

“In a sense, yes,” Sarah said, giving Dad a hard stare. “We’ll try things out for about a month and see how you do in some training sessions. That should give us a sense of where you are, and work things out like your tinkertech and branding. At the end of that, if we introduce you to the public, that should give you time to adjust to cape life before school starts.”

I rushed forward and hugged Sarah. “Oh, thank you, thank you,  _ thank you _ . I’ll make you proud, just you see.”

She hugged me back.

Neil’s arms closed around the both of us. “We’ll always be proud of you, Vic. Come on everybody, group hug time!”

Dad, Crystal, and surprisingly enough, even Mom joined in briefly. Then the group hug broke up, with Neil lingering the longest.

It wasn’t the perfect scenario I’d imagined in my head -- in that, I had the go-ahead to build Gjallarhorn, and I was joining the team immediately, but it was still amazing. I was going to be on New Wave. With my entire family. I was excited to get to know Crystal, Sarah, and Neil better.

“You won’t regret having me on the team,” I babbled. “I’m going to work so hard, and show up to all the practices, and try my best on everything…”

“Oh Victoria,” Mom said softly. “I hope  _ you _ don’t regret this.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original note on Dec 15, 2020: Thank you to Elandera, who repeatedly fielded question after question about Destiny guns and how realistic they are. Turns out, guns are pretty bad at being nonlethal weapons. Shotguns especially tend to act very differently IRL than they do in Destiny. Thanks to her help, I think I've found a level of handwavium around the issue that I'm okay with.
> 
> RIP my Subtle Calamity, which dropped for me within the first few weeks of playing the game with archer's tempo and dragonfly. You still are my most used energy weapon to this day.


End file.
